Half an hour after he had left the hotel, the revolving doors swung round the circle to admit a man with prosperous leather suit-case and "freckled" eyes. The day clerk handed him a pen and registration-slip. He was beginning to sign, after a curt question about the rates, when the blond cashier, perched on a stool in the wire cage adjoining the desk, pushed a similar slip of paper toward the clerk. "Can't quite make out that name," she confessed. "Looks like Renwich. Do you get it?"
The desk official glanced at it with the casually professional air of one to whom all the mysteries of chirography are as an open book. "It's Kenwick. Plain as day—Roger Kenwick."
The pen slid from the fingers of the man on the other side of the desk. For a moment, self-possession deserted Richard Glover. He stood there staring hard at the ugly blot which he had made across his own signature. Then he crumpled the bit of paper, threw it into the waste-basket, and, suit-case in hand, went out into the street.
The day clerk darted a contemptuous glance after his disappearing figure. "Some nut," he remarked. "Told me the terms were all right and then got cold feet. I'll bet he's a crook."
"Sure he's a crook." The blond cashier spoke with cheerful authority. "I could have told you that when he first came in. I can size 'em up as far off as the front door. And I had him posted on the 'Losses by Default' page before he'd set down his bag."
The day clerk regarded her musingly. "He had a bag, though, and that's more than this Kenwick fellow showed. But Brown thought he was all right and let him have 526. Did you notice him this morning? Tall, dark fellow, young but with hair a little gray around the temples."
"Ye-a. High-brow. Looks like he was here for his health. Probably broke down in some government job."
"No, he's a newspaper man."
"Let's see where he's from?" She reached for the slip.
"New York. Well, I slipped a cog. I would have said he was a Westerner."